David S. Goyer

Mysticism and the supernatural are embedded in the show - it's called 'Da Vinci's Demons' for a reason, and it's not just metaphorical.

'Batman Begins' came out and it was really successful, and it had gritty naturalism. And suddenly... I can't tell you how many movies I was pitched where it was, 'We want to do what you did with 'Batman' but with 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,' or whatever.

It's ironic: In movies, the most successful films of all time have been sci-fi or fantasy. By far. But a lot of people won't even read science fiction books.

I always felt that if we ever encountered an alien species, they wouldn't look like us or even be humanoid, like 'E.T.'

I think if we ever encountered aliens, even communicating with them would be really, really difficult.

Hollywood loves pre-validation. Even if someone has a property that was first published as a comic book that sold only 5,000 copies, for Hollywood, that is a stamp of approval. 'Oh, it was already published in another medium? Must be good!' They get assurance from knowing that someone else already took the risk.

I like telling stories of imperfect people because most people are imperfect.

I honestly love nothing better than digging into a really good serialized show, whether it's 'Breaking Bad' or 'Game of Thrones' or 'Justified.'

I grew up reading comic books, pulp books, mystery and science fiction and fantasy. I'm a geek; I make no pretensions otherwise. It's the stuff that I love writing about. I like creating worlds.

'Call Of Duty' initially cut its teeth on World War II simulation stuff, and then we gradually advanced to the end of the Cold War, but you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again. And I think that because 'Call Of Duty' cut its teeth on presenting 'realism,' in quotes... verisimilitude.

The thing about 'Batman Begins' is that he's a character that people thought they knew a lot about, and yet you're able to identify the spirit in his life where even in the comic books it's not explored that much.

I am an artist, and I understand the pros and cons of being an artist, and the pressures of being an artist, and how much being an artist can be torture to people around you; you know, you friends and your family and how material you can be, and how it's hard to take criticism and all the things like that.

I relate to the feeling that Da Vinci was often plagued by the idea that what he did wasn't good enough, that he was his harshest critic. He'd sometimes destroy what he was working on.

I did three or four weeks of work on 'Godzilla;' it wasn't a page-one rewrite or anything like that. The term is 'script doctoring,' is what I did on it.

Ever since I was a little kid, I told my mom that I want to go to Hollywood and make a 'Batman' movie.

'Flash Forward' was one of the big heartbreaks of my career. It was just this very frustrating experience. If we'd been allowed to tell the story we wanted to tell, I don't know that it would've been more successful or not. There's no way to know.

It took a while for the first 'Blade' to get made, and Marvel decided they liked the Whistler character so much, when Blade guest starred on the 'Spider-Man' cartoon, they put Whistler on the cartoon, and the movie hadn't come out yet.

People have a very proprietary relationship with Superman. It's important to respect the iconography and the canon, but at the same time, you have to tell a story. Once you land on who you think the character is and what his conflicts are, you have to let that lead you.

During my career I've enjoyed re-invigorating and contextualizing classic characters that are relatable to contemporary audiences.

I think Wonder Woman is a very difficult character to crack. More difficult than Superman, who is also more difficult than Batman. Also, a lot of people in Hollywood believe that it's hard to do a big action movie with a female lead. I happen to disagree with that.

As the CG in motion capture made it look realistic, it put more of an onus on the game makers to make the dialogue they're saying more realistic. It doesn't matter what they say when they're 8-bits, but if they look almost photo-real, it matters. More and more, the games industry is realising that.

I think there's really only been one successful video game adaptation, and that was probably 'Tomb Raider.' Whether or not you thought it was a good movie, it was successful financially.

Once we start seeing video games that have more memorable characters, you'll see better movie adaptations.

New platforms are emerging: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Xbox. And film actors are gravitating towards television, because there are basically better roles there. Television is making the kind of epics and genres that the movie studios used to make, and often doing it better with more complex narratives and corresponding budgets.

Superman is not as innately cool as Batman.